Hurt myself today
Rummaging thru suitcases in the attic, came across a strongly wrapped bundle, got teary.
Had to walk round the garden with muted Sam as I sobbed.
When me 'n' Steph decided it was divorce she said "OK, you tell the girls."
Anna was what 9? I collected her from school and we drove home and she was so excited, made a flute out of some wood, painted it gold.
"Listen dad, I can make a sound."
I sat there in the car. When is a good time? I told her.
Tears sprang to her eyes, then she got out and walked straight-back into the house.
When I went in she was sobbing in her room, this a woman who doesn't cry: rant rage kick the furniture about but no tears. I didnt go up.
I hung that 'flute' on the wall of the place I moved to. She'd see it there: "Dad, what's that doing there?" I told her it would always be with me wherever I went.
She didnt remember that day and would ask me with fascination, "So how was I?"
Sweetie you were magnificent.
Recollected in tranquility. I gazed at the crude piece of driftwood in my hands, its gold paint hastily applied, and it held everything I couldnt say.
I took it downstairs and placed it pride of place on my bedroom wall, where the musket or Monarch of the Glen should have hung.
So much good love turned aside and lost.
2 comments :
"So much good love turned aside and lost". It was a while ago because it took a while. You know perhaps that business of dividing stuff. The worst is stuff that was never divided because it took its meaning form being shared. And I thought it was perhaps just objects - at first. Then I realised that nearly all I looked at, felt, smelled and heard had come to be known only through being shared, so that not just me but *everything* was divorced, and my world had to be remade singular (there were no children). I suppose this is why some prescribe long walks to deal with loss. For me it was a long novel - War and Peace - in a bedsitter on St Martin's Lane and various eating places thereabouts.
Thanks.
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